Newtownards

History

In 540 AD, St. Finian founded Movilla Abbey, a monastery, on a hill overlooking Strangford Lough about a mile northeast of present-day Newtownards town centre. "Movilla" (Magh Bhile) means "the plain of the sacred tree" in Irish, which suggests that the land had previously been a sacred pagan site. It became a significant Christian settlement – a centre for worship, study, mission and commercial trade, well known throughout Ireland. It was sacked by the Vikings sometime after AD 824, though survived for a thousand years as a monastic settlement (becoming part of the Augustinian Order in 1135), until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1542. The Normans conquered east Ulster in the 1170s, founding the Earldom of Ulster. Around 1226, they established a new town around Movilla, which became known as the "New Town of Blathewic", after the Irish territory of Uí Blathmhaic. A Dominican priory was built in 1244 by Walter de Burgh and was also dissolved in 1542. In 1572, both monasteries were burned by the Clannaboy O'Neills under Sir Brian McPhelim O'Neill to deny buildings to the English, who were attempting to colonize the Ards. In 1605 (prior to the official Plantation of Ulster in 1610), Hugh Montgomery was granted the lands and set about rebuilding what was by then known as Newtown, later expanded to Newtownards. Official records show the town was established in 1606. Montgomery built a residence in the ruins of the old priory, the tower of which remains. Scottish Protestant settlers, particularly from Ayr, and to a lesser extent Irvine, in Ayrshire, arrived in large numbers and the town grew quickly. Due to the shallow mud of Strangford Lough, Newtown never developed as a port, with goods instead transported from the nearby town of Donaghadee on the Irish Sea…